4.1.2. New information focus
New information focus provides new information in the form of a single constituent. This kind of focus is also called identificational focus, or narrow focus. The focused element in TİD may occupy different positions in a sentence. It can occur in the sentence-initial position.
yesterday[focus], chıld garden ball play
‘The child played ball in the garden yesterday.’
(Makaroğlu 2012: 67)
The focused element may also occur in the sentence-final position.
chıld garden ball play yesterday[focus]
‘The child played ball in the garden yesterday.’
(Makaroğlu 2012: 67)
In both of these sentences, the salient part that the signer conveys is ‘yesterday’.
The answer to a wh-question which asks for the identification of a particular entity or state of affairs, such as ‘What did the man kick?’, contains a constituent which carries new information focus. Clefted constituents in a wh-cleft also carry new information focus. ball below is new information.
man footCL(6):‘kıck’ round_obj.CL(/):‘go’ ıx3a what ball
‘What the man kicked (and as a consequence went) was a ball.’
(adapted from Kayabaşı in progress)
Self-corrective focus occurs in narrative discourse where the signer confuses the referents and self-corrects. These are typically marked prosodically with closed-eyes, raised eye-eyebrows, and optionally, a change in head position mostly actualized as a head-shake - the latter two of which correlate with the non-manual marking of negation in TİD (Gökgöz 2011). Corrective focus below is on cat.
ce
br
man CL(B):‘use_stetoscope’ cat CL(B):‘use_stetoscope’
‘The man… no, the cat is using the statoscope.’
(Gökgöz in progress)
This project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant Agreement No 693349.